Shopify vs WooCommerce – to put it simply, these are two of the most popular and easy-to-use eCommerce platforms available on the market.

Each one has multiple strengths and can possibly be the perfect solution for you to build an eCommerce store with. And the best news is that you can do so all on your own, without any help from professional designers and/or developers.First, which one of the two is actually going to fit your specific needs better, Shopify or WooCommerce (for creating a fantastic online shop)? Which is more feature-rich? Which is cheaper? Which is better-looking? Which is more flexible? Which is the easiest to work with?

We have lots of questions to get to, but we’re going to answer them all in this in-depth comparison. After reading it, you will know exactly which ecommerce platform to choose based on your individual needs. So, let’s compare Shopify vs WooCommerce to see which one is the absolute best:

Chapter #1: Shopify vs WooCommerce – Design

For websites (particularly ecommerce stores) design is everything. Customers simply don’t trust a site that doesn’t have the right aesthetic or doesn’t function as well as it should.

How Shopify Does Design

One of Shopify‘s greatest selling points is the visual quality of its themes. In my opinion, they look absolutely great out of the box. Shopify comes with more than 54 different store templates, of which 10 are free. What’s more is that each of the themes have unique variations. Therefore, you’re technically getting more than 100 separate designs.

The best part is that they are all mobile responsive and have a variety of different coloring options. They have a fashionably sleek and clean aesthetic, which makes it perfect for modern, forward-thinking websites.

Shopify’s designs aren’t created in-house, by the way. They’re outsourced to a group of professional web designers who ensure they’re as current and as engaging as they can be. We like this approach because you get creativity from a wide variety of companies and people, making for a better selection.

Unfortunately, the price tags on the premium ones go as high as $180. But what you get in exchange is a great design.

Luckily, there are free options available too.

The instant attraction of Shopify designs can cause many webmasters to select the same themes. Some Shopify users who have designed a site themselves have later complained of looking a little too similar to other websites. For that reason, customization is encouraged.

Luckily, Shopify themes are easy to change. You can quickly adjust colors and styles, while more adept developers can utilize the platform’s specialized ‘Liquid’ language to make more substantial changes and really make a brand stand out.

And even better, they do offer a Theme editor within the platform that you can use for customization. You can choose to hide sections within the theme editor without removing them. Hidden sections will still be customisable in the theme editor but not visible on the store front-end. This allows you to start sections for future releases and remove the need for theme duplications ( a common issue most developers face with WordPress).

How WooCommerce Does Design

As with many other aspects of the WooCommerce experience, when it comes to aesthetics, the world is your oyster. You just have to put the hours in.

WooCommerce is a plugin created by the developers from WooThemes (and acquired by Automattic). As such, it doesn’t deliver any specific design traits on its own. What it does is provides you with the means to sell products and services online. The design part, however, is left to your current or future WordPress theme.

WooCommerce has been built to cooperate with most themes on the market, provided that they follow the standard recommendations and best practices.

This means that, in most cases, you are able to select any WordPress theme that you like, and still make it work together with WooCommerce.

However, you will also come across themes that have been built with WooCommerce in mind from the get-go and are tailor-made to make all your product/service listings look great. If the design of the eCommerce store itself is particularly important to you, you should look for themes that are specifically made for WooCommerce.

The place to start would be Woo’s own default online store theme called Storefront (free). It’s a really efficient creation that puts the focus on all the important elements of an eCommerce store.

You can also get a range of child themes for Storefront in case you want to customize the look of your store further. Most of the child themes are available at $39 a piece (occasionally, though, there are themes with price tags as high as $119). If you’re a developer with ecommerce clients, they have a package for $399 where you get all of the themes in the library.

Apart from that, you can also look into marketplaces like ThemeForest where they have hundreds of other WooCommerce-compatible themes.

To be honest, WooCommerce has a serious advantage over Shopify when it comes to designs. Shopify has wonderful themes, but they’re limited to what you can find in the Shopify Theme Store. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is opensource so tons of developers sell (or give away) incredible WooCommerce themes for all sorts of industries and purposes.

The main difference between Shopify pricing and WooCommerce pricing

On the one hand, WooCommerce is a free open source software plugin. Yes, the plugin is free, but then you have to consider the additional costs that go along with making an online store. WordPress is free as well, but you have to consider things like hosting, the cost of a theme, a domain name, any additional extensions and an SSL certificate.

Shopify is all about delivering you a single, out-of-the-box solution with just a few pricing packages. You sign up, then you get to use your shiny new eCommerce store right away since everything you need is included from the get-go.

Here’s a table that should make the costs involved with each platforms easier to grasp:

Note. Both Shopify and WooCommerce offer you a handful of tiers / options to upgrade your version of the platform depending on the type of your business, the scale of your sales, etc. To simplify this comparison, I’m going to focus on the cheapest path – what it costs, at the minimum to have a working eCommerce store with Shopify vs WooCommerce.

As you can see, even though the WooCommerce software is free, running an actual eCommerce store costs basically the same as Shopify, if not more.

But that’s not all. With WooCommerce, you might also have to factor in the additional extensions for things like SEO, more payment gateways, and so on. Those extensions are usually around the $49-79 mark (one-time payments).

What it all comes down to is that although WooCommerce is technically the cheaper solution, it will require much more work to set it up, and you’ll need to be more careful not to go over your budget, as every additional extension comes with a price tag. In the end, with WooCommerce, you’re spending more time on setup and management, which translates to dollars.

Shopify boasts a much more conventional pricing structure. It has a sliding scale of packages which offer users a range of different features up front – Lite ($9 per month,) Basic Shopify ($29 per month,) Shopify ($79 per month) and Advanced Shopify ($299 per month).

Last but not least, there are the transaction fees. In essence, whenever you sell something with either of the platforms, they will charge you a small fee (for processing the payment, delivering the money to your account, etc.). Those fees change quite often, so I won’t get into that here, but just be aware that they exist. Usually, they sit around 2%-3% per transaction but make sure to check the exact numbers before signing up with either of the platforms.

Chapter #3: Shopify vs WooCommerce – Features

While both platforms’ approaches to pricing are different, they’re relatively similar when it comes to giving your eCommerce site what it needs. Unlike a platform like Bigcommerce, Shopify and WooCommerce are more basic with the ecommerce essentials built into the main software.

However, both have solid app stores for installing any other features you may need.

How Shopify Helps You Sell

Although you will probably need to install apps to make the most of the platform, Shopify offers significantly more free options. From the very start Shopify gives you:

In comparison, some of these free features, such as CSV uploads, shipping options, and bookings will set you back up to $500-600 with WooCommerce.

How WooCommerce Helps You Sell

As open source software, WordPress is well known for allowing third-party developers to create various extensions and plugins. WooCommerce taps into that further by offering lots of interesting and exciting additions. Whether you want to easily edit aesthetics, sell on Facebook, ramp up email marketing techniques, understand user behavior or quite frankly do anything else, you’ll be able to.

Here’s what you’ll find inside WooCommerce:

You can sell physical products, digital products (including software and apps), plus it’s also good for affiliate marketing

Payments via PayPal and Stripe built-in (plus a range of other gateways available for an extra fee)

Adjustable shipping rates and taxes

Unlimited number of products and product categories

Stock levels control

Mobile-friendly structure

You have complete control over your data

Works with your current WordPress theme

Literally hundreds of plugins (extensions) available

A free Facebook ad and Facebook stores extension

Shopify vs WooCommerce Features Compared Side-by-side

Just to make everything above easier to grasp, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the essential eCommerce features in Shopify and WooCommerce:

Shopify vs WooCommerce side by side

Shopify

WooCommerce

Is a subscription-based tool/service + a complete, out-the-box eCommerce solution.

Is a free WordPress plugin. It requires hosting and a working WordPress installation to run.

As you can see, there’s nothing particularly important that’s missing from either platform. Choosing one over the other can often come down to your personal preference, or your thoughts on the value (or lack thereof) of open source software vs the rest.But, the devil is in the details. At the end of the day, Shopify seems like a more laser-focused solution. Everything that Shopify offers is geared at making your online store more functional and easy to use. With WooCommerce, the platform is extremely feature-rich and it doesn’t lack any specific eCommerce features. However, it’s still an add-on to WordPress, making it more complex to configure.

In the end, though, there’s no clear winner here in the features department. Both platforms have everything that a standard eCommerce setup could need.

Chapter #4: Ease of use

Since we haven’t had a clear winner when it comes to eCommerce features, maybe we can have one in regards to the ease of use. The ease of use pertains to how easy it is to set up and manage a working eCommerce store with either platform.

How Easy to Use is Shopify?

The main strength of Shopify is that it’s a subscription-based online tool. In other words, to use it, all you need to do is visit Shopify.com, click the signup button, go through a basic setup wizard, and you’re done.

Shopify is going to help you along the way, asking about the purpose/nature of your store (what you’re planning to sell), and giving you some overall tips as to which design/structure to choose and how to set everything up.

Once you get through that initial wizard, you will get access to the main dashboard. It’s from there that you can create your new eCommerce store, add new products, and so on.

Overall, the whole process is very straightforward, and most importantly, you don’t need any design or site-building skills in order to get through it.

Later on – once you have the store running – you can access every crucial option from the sidebar of the dashboard:

This sort of organization should make your daily work in the store very easy to grasp.

When it comes to adding new products to your store, handling sales and orders, it’s rather intuitive. For example, when adding a product, all product parameters are available from a single panel, so you don’t have to visit different areas of the dashboard to set things like the name, price, images, stock levels, and etc.

Here’s what the “new product” screen looks like:

Overall, Shopify is a solid solution, and the best thing about it is that you can sign up and create a store right away, with no unexpected interruptions.

How Easy to Use is WooCommerce?

To some extent, WooCommerce is just as easy to use as Shopify. But there’s a catch.

The catch is this: Although working with WooCommerce on a daily basis is just as simple as with Shopify, setting up the store isn’t.

Basically, since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and not a subscription-based solution like Shopify, this means that you need to handle a couple of things before you ever get to work with WooCommerce itself.

Mainly, you need to complete the following:

Get a domain name

Sign up for a hosting account

Install WordPress

Find and install a WordPress theme

It is only after you have those four taken care of that you can install the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress website and start getting through the configuration of your online store.

Unfortunately, those steps do require some level of comfort around web-related things. After all, it involves setting up your web server, redirecting your domain to said server, and lastly getting WordPress properly installed and made operational.

To make that somewhat easier on yourself, you can choose a specialized WordPress hosting company that will take care of the domain and WordPress installation for you, leaving only the WooCommerce part to you. Either way, it’s all significantly more difficult than Shopify’s one-click, “sign up” button.

There’s also the design. WooCommerce doesn’t come with any actual “design”. It’s all handled via a WordPress theme of your choice. Luckily, WooCommerce works with basically all themes on the market, but it’s still on you to find one you like and install it on the site.

Now, about WooCommerce itself:

As I said, the platform in itself is just as easy to use as Shopify. The second you get the WooCommerce plugin installed and activated, you’ll see the on-screen setup wizard. It consists of five(-ish) steps and takes you by the hand through every crucial element.

Basically, it lets you choose the main parameters of the store, and get everything neatly configured. For example, some of the important steps involve things like currency settings, shipping and tax, and payment gateways.

Once the installation is done, you can start using your store and begin adding products.

I showed you Shopify’s “add product” page above, so now let’s look at WooCommerce’s:

As you can see, it’s very much the same. Only some of the details are showcased slightly differently.

Which is Easier to Use, Shopify or WooCommerce?

Because of the initial hassle involved with setting up a WooCommerce store, I have to give this round to Shopify.

The fact that you can just click the sign up button and then have the whole store set up within minutes is very impressive in Shopify.

However, once you’re working with the store on a daily basis, Shopify and WooCommerce both present a similar level of ease.

Chapter #5: Shopify vs WooCommerce – Support

There’s also the issue of technical support. Shopify is renowned for its high quality of customer care. Each client can enjoy 24/7 access to a customer adviser in case they have any issues or queries (via email, open chat, phone call).

Apart from that, you also get access to an extensive knowledge base that covers some of the common user questions and problem solutions.

The matter of support with WooCommerce isn’t as straightforward. First off, WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin. This means that you can get support through the WordPress forums. However, at the same time, the WooCommerce team also enables everyone to create a free user account over at WooCommerce.com and get support there.

There are also tons of blogs on the internet that cover WooCommerce topics. Overall, WooCommerce is great for people who don’t need to speak with a rep but would rather complete their own research online.

In the end, I have to give the support round to Shopify. Nothing beats 24/7 access to a support person.

Chapter #6: Shopify vs WooCommerce – SEO

Any website that wants to make a splash needs strong SEO. Luckily, both contenders here have a lot going for them.

How Shopify Helps with SEO

Shopify may come second when we look at the overall volume of SEO features available, but there’s certainly no shame in the way that it presents content. It also handles basic SEO practices like meta information and site copy with ease. So long as your business is producing quality content, there’s no reason to suggest you won’t enjoy great results and strong user engagement.

Site wide, there are plenty of ways that Shopify proves to beat WooCommerce in the SEO game. It’s actually renowned by developers like me as having some of the cleanest code and natural linking structure, which offers a smooth user experience and in turn enhances visibility in search engine rankings.

One interesting case that’s worth pointing out is what happened to the Lost Cyclist, an eCommerce expert. When he moved his site from Shopify to WooCommerce, he noticed that the traffic dropped quite a bit:

(If you’d like to dig deeper into how different shopping cart platforms can help your business with SEO, you might want to read this post.)

What’s more, Shopify is fast. Because it’s a hosted platform that’s built on huge infrastructure, Shopify offers each of its webmasters rapid loading pages. As a result, shops stand a better chance of ranking well and a better chance of leading customers to conversions.

How WooCommerce helps with SEO

WordPress is primarily a content creation platform, and it’s renowned by SEO experts as one of the most reliable options available. It’s easy to add and edit content and meta information to ensure that pages have a strong chance of ranking for specific keywords.

With plugins such as Yoast SEO, you can make your WordPress site highly optimized and be in full control of every little detail that’s SEO-related.

WooCommerce takes advantage of what’s already there in WordPress, or what’s available through third-party plugins like the aforementioned Yoast SEO, or the WooCommerce-dedicated version of the Yoast plugin.

In the end, WooCommerce gives you more SEO-specific options overall, purely because of the fact that it’s built on top of WordPress. The only problem is that your site speed largely depends on the hosting you go with. Because of this, the SEO category goes to Shopify. You don’t have to worry about optimization much, and your speeds are always going to be top-notch.

Shopify vs WooCommerce: Conclusion

Comparisons such as this are never cut and dry. When I talk with clients, my recommendations always fluctuate depending on their specific situations.

Here are my recommendations based on the type of user that you are / what you expect from your eCommerce platform:

Go With Shopify If:

You appreciate a hands-off approach, where you can just sign up and have an eCommerce store launched as a result of it.

You don’t want to have to deal with any of the setup yourself, and you don’t mind paying a fee to have everything taken care of for you.

At the same time, you want a highly optimized solution that’s in no way worse than what the competition has.

You want to have a reliable and fast-responding support team at your disposal, just in case you have any questions.

You basically don’t care about any of the technical details of your eCommerce platform. You just want it to work as expected, and be accessible to all customers and on all devices (mobile and desktop).